Adventurepan, i,e. Adventures from someone living in Japan, who used to write a blog called Adventurestan, which was by someone living in Afghanistan.
Do you enjoy profanity, rants that are mildly informed at best, and a Heinleinian outlook on how society ought to be? Look no further.

Monday, May 01, 2006

...oh deer

You ever tried to do a trip on the cheap? But due to some things that are and are not within your control, the trip ends up being at least twice as much as you intended?

Yeah, welcome to my weekend.

I rented the battlewagon and cruised up to Tokyo to collect the Canadians.

It was time for another Osaka road trip !!!

Computer! Show battlewagon!

Road tripping with 4 or more people is the most economical way to travel domestically. I can rent a van for $50 a day, and the van comes with toll vouchers. From Tokyo to Osaka (one way) is a little over $100, which is waived for us. If we took the train it would be about $150 per person one way. It sucks.

Anywho, we thought it would be better to leave at night 'cuz there'd be less traffic. Wrong. Once again, we imposed our North American assumptions upon Japan and it blew up in our faces. We didn't realize that the Japanese highways are giant truck parties all night long. While we made pretty good time, the trucks tacked on about an extra hour of time, so we showed up in Osaka at around 7:30am. Since I rent the van from base, I'm the only one who can drive. That kind've sucks, but I don't really mind driving long distances, and if I feel like being a little bitch at some point along the trip, I'm totally within my bounds.

Not that that ever happens...

On the way down I noticed some tasty treats available for weary travelers.

And for those of you who are fans of funny fat white folks?

120yen. You'd think it'd be more expensive.

So, what did you guys do in Osaka??

We did some drinking, but I'll spare you a post about me getting shit faced and pissing off every woman that cares about me in the least. I'll also spare you the drunk "look I'm drunk hanging on a girl" pictures too. This is a post about cultural stuff. I'm being refined here.

Exhibit A:

As you can see, Osaka is in Kansai, which is near a few other cool cities. One might say that Kansai is the cultural breadbasket of Japan, assuming one were to ever use culture and breadbasket in the same sentence. Again, Drewski's brother is in town, and the Canadians were jonesin' for some roadtrippage.

Kyoto was the old capital of Japanistan back in the diz-ay, and the USA was kind enough not to level it during WWII. I really liked going there when I was a student here. My favorite place (as some of you may remember) is Kinkakuji, or the Golden Pavilion.

I took that picture. I think it's physically impossible to take a bad picture of that place. It almost looks fake.

After that we cruised over to some other temples and shrines. It's kind've easy to get all Temple'd out there, because they're everywhere. Oh look, a temple. Oh look, another one. I almost threw my mom off the side of Kiyomizudera when she was visiting because we saw like 800 temples and shrines in one day. I called it the "Temple Shuffle".

I'm not a real culture-y guy, you see. I like what I like, but I have the attention span of a gold fish.

After that we went to some other places, like here:

Computer! Enhance!

One of the best parts of the trip was how big my friends are. One is 6'6, one is 6'3 or 6'4, and the other is 6'1. When we'd stop at rest stops in the countryside people would crash into stuff rubbernecking. Super-size Gaijin.

Except for me.

I'm just a baby.

Anyway, after a night of revelry, we cruised over to Nara to play with the deer. There are deer cruising around in some of the parks. You can feed them little crackers called "shika senbei". They don't really like to play though, and they're not really interested in hanging out if you're not feeding them. We found a little family of deer and cautiously approached.

I found one hanging out, so I offered up a cracker, which she graciously accepted.

Then I saw a little baby dear.

"Who's a cute little baby dear?!?!", I asked.

Then something weird happened.

"Wow," thought I. "He's possessed!"

He wanted some crackers.

Or maybe my flash was on.

Whichever.

In any case, the deer are taught to bow before they get crackers, so they trot over to you and start bowing. They don't do it indefinitely though, and they get really pissed off if you don't give them anything. I was looking for a cliff to stampede them off of, but I didn't have any luck finding one.

Here's a video of one of them bowing.

So aside from me hitting a pole with the van (which is probably gonna cost about $400) and accidentally spending $100 on parking for 2 days in Osaka, the trip wasn't really that expensive!

Maybe I'll post again when I find out how much the damage is to the van. Or maybe I'll just lock myself in my room.

Cory,You bring up a good point, which I suggest you take and shove it!

Just kidding. I just wanted to destroy something beautiful.

Well, the van wasn't too big of a deal, 'cuz I only had to pay a $100 deductable. *phew* I told the guy at the rental place, "wow, I shoulda done more damage then", and he didn't seem amused.

Then he called the MPs cuz it was a government vehicle and they had to check it out. I did a ton of paperwork and was really polite and apologetic to them throughout the whole ordeal, and in the end he sheepishly pulled out a ticket book and said, "Well, I gotta cite you for failure to judge distances" and I started giggling. The other MP kinda laughed too. I guess I was in a good mood 'cuz I didn't have to eat a $400 bill.